>Steven has clarified the philological aspect of 'rifiuto'. This
>information makes
>me wish to find out more about uses of 'abdication' and 'renunciation'; I'll
>follow Steven's indication, and check the *Enciclopedia dantesca* before
>bothering any of you about this. Steven has also mentioned the
>Durling/Martinez
>translation/commentary. I've only seen their 'Inferno'; are the others in
>print
>yet? I do agree that Singleton is indeed hidebound; his continual
>references to
>Aquinas as the one and only fount of all that is medieval and
>theologically sound
>do aggravate me! In the meantime, I'd still say his is the most informative
>commentary of the entire *Commedia* that is readily available. Unless
>you've got
>one of your own in typescript, Steven; if so, let us see it!! :-)
>
Otfried is more up-to-date than I on the progress of Durling/Martinez - I'm
glad to hear that _Purgatory_ is about to appear. I certainly don't have a
commentary of my own in typescript, and I expect you're all very relieved
indeed to hear that :-)
George, you won't be pleased to hear that if you look up "rifiuto" in
Battaglia's _Grande dizionario della lingua italiana_ you'll find that one
of the subsidiary senses is "abdicazione", further glossed as follows: "il
gran rifiuto: l'abdicazione di Papa Celestino V (nel linguaggio dantesco)".
They give a couple of other instances, one from Boccaccio which also
refers to Celestine and is therefore clearly influenced by Dante's usage.
On Singleton: Otfried and Pat between them point to some of the most
obvious failings of his edition, and of course he's been dealt with rather
scathingly by Antonio Mastrobuono from the point of view of his actual
knowledge and (mis-)use of Aquinas. Having grown up on the other side of
the Atlantic, from where both his essays and his edition looked somewhat
eccentric and undernourished, I've always been rather baffled by the extent
of his hegemony in American Dante studies (which I think, and have argued
in detail elsewhere, has diminished considerably since his death); but one
factor does seem to have been that he was by all accounts an
extraordinarily good teacher, and his pupils have been a prolific and
fiercely loyal presence in enough departments of Italian, English, Comp Lit
and medieval studies for him to have achieved an influence that his work
alone might not have merited.
Pat's comments on the importance of considering multiple possibilities of
sources for any given allusion, character ot whatever are absolutely
spot-on. All too often the canonical reference in the commentaries (often
handed down, as Otfried rightly says, from Dante's sons' time to our own)
turns out simply not to be helpful, if you actually bother to look it up
and compare it with Dante's text. There's a general point to be made
there, I think, about the flexibility and free-associativeness of medieval
textual culture in general - it's very hard for us, with our scholarly
ideals of correct citation and our strong concept of authorial property and
our instinctive belief in the authentic text, to think ourselves back into
the medieval situation, where all these notions were much more fluid.
[You'll have gathered that I'm no postmodernist, and it may be that those
who are don't recognize themselves in those first-person plural pronouns,
for which I apologize :-) ]. Add to that, with Dante, the obvious fact
that he is a "strong" poet, in Harold Bloomian terms, who can be relied
upon never to use a source without adapting it and almost never to settle
for a single source, and you have exactly the problem that Pat alludes to -
which can't be dealt with, as earlier scholars, including Singleton, were
too often tempted to do, by picking a single master-predecessor text and
twisting the _Commedia_ or the minor works to fit it (cf. Busnelli and
Vandelli's edition of the _Convivio_ for another egregious instance).
Pat - dare I hazard a guess at the identity of the translator with the
annotating daughter? This didn't happen in Minneapolis, by any chance, did
it? :-)
Steven Botterill
Associate Professor of Italian Literature & Romance Philology
Chair, Department of Italian Studies
6303 Dwinelle Hall #2620
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2620
(510) 642-6246/642-9884 (FAX)
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